


Choice

by Mia_J



Category: Chicago PD (TV)
Genre: Drowning, Exhaustion, Gen, Needles, Torture, Waterboarding, Whump, hurt jay, torture with consent, violent Voight
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-02-28 22:27:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13281132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mia_J/pseuds/Mia_J
Summary: In order to success in undercover task, Jay consents to be put through hell. (So far some clean torture, and little later on some solid whump, hopefully.))





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello to everyone. The story is set in the beggining of season 5, somewhere before Jay meets Camilla. She and the military-related case don't fit in this story. The idea of Voight torturing Jay didn't leave me alone and as I don't have any close writer-friends I have to do the job myself :D Few bullet notes:
> 
> \- The story is not finished yet, I have a plot and ideas, only the writing is slow as hell because - I do not write, so if anyone like this idea, just take it, write it and send me the link, please :D I'll be happy to pass it and discuss it!  
> \- I am not English native, my English is actualy not good, really, so please excuse my grammar and if there's something completely not making sense, my apologies; I will fix whatever anybody points out, though  
> \- I love whump, and this idea was born because of it, finding the ways to justify why would Voight torture Jay and why would Jay let him, is just fun! :)

A thick long silver needle is piercing slowly and steadily through the tissue underneath his skin, controllably tearing up the tissue on his abdomen, making a visible outline that reveals the location of the spike. It is clean work, not even single drop of blood on the surface.  

_Don’t move. You can’t move._

His hands clutch into fists and his nails dig into his palm as he tries to divert the pain he can’t control into one he can. But he knows this maneuver is not working anymore and he needs to ask. He doesn’t want to, he struggles to hold on a little longer closing his eyes shut. At the point, he feels he will not be able to inhale the needed air without hitching, he gives up.

„Uhm...“ he tries to make a sound to check how badly is the pain affecting his voice. „S-sarge,“ he looks down at the man holding the needle as the it goes further to his skin and then resurfaces . _I can’t I am so sorry._ Once the needle goes below again, he knows he needs to say it. „Stop.“

His sergeant continues to work without a flinch like he is deaf. He expects this by now. He knows that pushing the limits is his thing. But as the needle continue to touch his nerves, he feels his brain sending signals to his body to defend itself and he cannot control the moves his legs are doing now. He lets out a breath he was holding, inhales a little of air and holds again, hoping Voight will stop before he will be forced to pull another oxygen into his lungs.

„Hank,“ Alvin stands up from the chair and gets closer to the metallic table where Jay lies, leather ties on his ankles and wrists the only thing preventing him from dangerous squirming. _Good, that is good, he could make him stop._ But Hank continues to lead the needle furthermore. „Let him just take a breath.“

He stops. For a moment. Jay releases breath and starts breathing fast to catch up the deficit. Taking in mind the pain caused by the needle to control it, he shivers. He can do that. Steady pain yes, he just cannot take any new for a moment.

„Okay, Jay. I’m gonna continue now.“ Voight announces not even a minute after stopping, seeing that the breathing of his subordinate slowed a bit. _One more moment, please_. Jay says in his mind several times hoping it will have some effect, knowing it won’t.

„I am sorry,“ he apologies, for two reasons – first, hoping it will prolong the brief pause and second, feeling ashamed for asking to stop. This one is tough, he didn’t expect it to be. He didn’t expect that Voight would go on him with invasive methods. But he accepted it.

His sergeant just takes a quick look at his glassy eyes and with a worry on his face he tries to encourage him. „You are doing great, Jay.“ This is hard for him too, especially this session. Yet, they both do it with consent because it is needed for greater good, as cliché as it may sound.  

Then, Voight takes the needle handle between his thumb and index finger and resumes the pushing against it, placing his left hand on Jay stomach to keep track of the top of it. Having no other defense mechanism, Jay’s eyes close again, his hands curl in fists. This is the fifth and there are ten more to go. And this time he is aware that his next _stop_ will go unheard.

 

* * *

 

Jay sits behind his desk staring at the black display of turned off monitor, supporting his heavy head with a right hand. The office is empty, all his colleagues already left. Except Voight and Alvin, who are discussing something in Voight‘s office. Before they took their silent discussion behind the closed door, he was asked to wait. And he waits here for a half an hour not even once thinking about what could Voight want.

He knows he is becoming better in accepting his new situation working in the intelligence unit without the women he loved, and without a partner he trusted. He was worried, when she made clear she is not coming back, that this work will not bring him the satisfaction that it did when she was around. But as they cleared out the streets from another corrupted person, he felt satisfied even without her.

Once this thought comes to his mind, he sends it away as he starts to feel it is betraying her. Let’s focus on work from now on. He doesn’t have to deal with it, it will subside itself with time.

He pulls out one of the case files from his drawer and starts to work on one of his cases when the door to his boss' office slowly opens.

„Jay.“ His name comes from the right side. He turns his head to Voight and takes in the seriousness in his eyes. Maybe he should have think about what his boss wants a little bit. Now he feels unprepared for this level of gravity. „Can you join us?“ Voight invites him to his office. _Oh, this sounds like a problem._

„Sure, Sarge,“ he stands up from the chair and follows to the office. 

„Sit down.“ Voight commands and takes a seat too. Alvin sits on the couch, not saying a word. Jay starts to feel nervous but does everything to hide it. He didn’t do anything wrong, there is no reason for his boss to take him out of the unit or rebuke him. He is certain.

However, he can’t help but feel nauseous because his boss always sees the invisible.

„I know that the last couple of months hasn’t been easy for you,“ Voight starts after longer than awkward silence. „And I’m aware that you are coping well and I would like you to keep it that way.“ Jay absorbs his words and takes it as a good introduction. Maybe this will not be such an issue after all.

 _Just no forced vacation days please. That I really don’t need._ Jay shifts on his seat and nods. “I will.” Their relationship become more solid after Erin left. Voight seemed to trust him the most and he let Jay to know it, which created a stronger bond between them and Jay’s respect towards his boss increased above everything negative he felt about him.

Voight and Alvin exchange a look. “Hold on to this confidence. I’ve got a case for you.” Voight finally shares the point of this meeting and passes a thin folder to Jay. He opens it to see a picture of a dark-haired man with name Henry Valdez written on the bottom of the photo. There is nothing else in the file and Jay looks up in confusion.

“Valdez is an army recruiter. Recruits guys for special ops. He also recruits army vets to be his own mercenaries for an organization of hitmen and informants he leads. We have no evidence on him.”

Voight hands him over another thicker file. „This one is full of results of his men. And This one,“ he grabs third folder, „this one is full of his work.“

Jay quickly goes through the second set of pictures, usually dead, bloody bodies, headshot kills; then extends his hand to get the third folder. Already getting the pieces together and anticipating an offer to go undercover.

Third folder contains four small passport photos of men paired with photos of damaged bodies attached to detailed pathology reports. Jay goes quickly through the papers, then closes the third file, looks Voight in the eye and waits for some follow up, exasperated from what he’d just seen.

“You want him to recruit me.” Jay says when nothing comes from Voight who is analyzing Jay with his shooting eyes. “Okay, I do it.” Jay determines and looks at Al and back at Voight not seeing any big deal in it.

Voight is not surprised with the almost enthusiastic reaction but his hopes were him being more hesitative. „Jay, I can’t just send you to him. The four shattered bodies belong to ex-military men he tried to recruit. He tortured them to death.“ Voight says with motion to the folder knowing that Jay is not intimidated by any danger that can cross him in the job, but little more self preservation would not hurt.

„I don’t get it, sarge,“ Jay shakes his head. Why else would Voight show him all this.

Voight again switches his eyes to Alvin as if he needs a confirmation from him for what he is about to say. „What I am trying to say, they didn’t pass the entrance exam. You won’t survive it, you don’t get the job.“

Jay begins to understand the unpleasantness of this conversation and doesn’t change his expression to hide whatever reaction could Voight read from it. He gets lost for a minute in his thoughts, trying to picture it. His boss is _asking_ him to be voluntarily tortured, possibly killed along with it.

„How do you know that?“ he finally finds one neutral question that could give him some time to think.

„We’ve been tailing him for some time now,“ Alvin says his first words. „He’s got an access to military database where he screens his targets he meets them in a local vet bar. We assume, he offers miraculously big paycheck for first mission,“ Al points to the third file, „and if they survive it, he uses them for various tasks – simply said – to kill, to gather, to kidnap. For a fortune.“ He finishes.

„That’s what drives them to do it.“ Voight supplies. „Our estimate is, right now he’s got five men at his disposal. We don’t know the names, we don’t know the targets or where he gets them.  The last one was recruited probably two months ago. Since then – two bodies.“

„Which means he might be desperately looking for a new goods.“

„Naturally, when he doesn‘t find them good enough for the job, he ends it.“ Voight stands up and crosses his hands over the chest.

Jay absorbs the information coming from both, nodding. „Yeah... no paycheck.“ He makes clear that he understands the case now and clenches his jaw feeling uncomfortable. He knows he is going to say yes again, but he also sees the conflict in Voight. Must have been hard for him to approach with this, the thought crosses his mind but is chased away quickly with the bulletproof excuse: „Sarge, you know what I‘m going to say. It’s our job.“

„Jay, we have the pathology reports of the bodies and we have his psychological profile. So we know a lot about this... procedure. And I’m not letting you to go in without a prep.“ Voight sends another unsettling news to the already out of air room and Jay glances at him, baffled.

„Meaning?“ Jay asks uneasily in silent voice.

„I’m aware of the fact you are thousand percent focused on the job right now, whatever the reasons are… And I don’t want to take an advantage of your situation. But I need you on this, Halstead.” Voight admits not wanting to make this harder for himself by saying the words out loud. 

Alvin bends his head down in disapproval of Voight’s avoidance to be direct. Bad days are awaiting this kid, and they can’t even say straightly what it is going to be.

“You want to torture me?” Jay connects two and two and throws bewildered eyes on his boss. Then looks back at his senior colleague, rage slowly filling him as he fails to hide his discomfort.

Voight expression is as neutral as can be. “No. I don’t,” he says resolutely. “But I will, if you go in.”

“Don’t you think it’s a _little_ bit awkward?” Jay grimaces unbelievably and stares at his boss. First of all (not even wanting to rethink it), he already proved himself in that area in front of whole unit while being kidnapped by Keyes. Second of all, his sergeant knew he attended survival training sessions as a part of his military training. What more his boss needed? He feels offended. Third… he couldn’t ignore that his sergeant never liked him.

“You said it yourself, Jay. It is our job.” Voight shrugs, wishing Jay will make peace with that.

Jay looks up, still not sure what to say. “I-… How… how you want to do this?” He asks tentatively, giving non-direct consent to it against his thinking.

“Okay,” Voight nods and makes his way next to Jay who stands up as if defending himself. “Go home, Jay. Take this with you,” he hands him over the third file and puts a hand on Jay’s shoulder, “take a picture from it, think about it.” Voight takes a step back from him with eyes still pinned on him. “I’m gonna need at least a week with you, before we send you to him. If you still consent to this by tomorrow evening, come to me.”

Jay takes the file and swiftly exits the office without leaving any goodbye word. His thoughts coming chaotically once he is free of the tension. _No_ , he can’t think about it. He just needs to say yes or no in his mind. And he already knows it is yes, no matter what he finds in the reports. He just needs to come to Voight tomorrow, say Yes and then live through it and then mark another catch.

“I think that went well,” Alvin breaks the silence with an announcement which cannot be easily deciphered as ironic or not. “Are you okay?”

“I am. For now,” Voight says, not taking his eyes of his detective who is walking down the stairs. “You are gonna be there with him,” he turns to Al. “All the way.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few more lines trying to defend the point, make the story more believable. And finally, a part of first session, yay! .)))

The next morning Jay waits for Alvin on the police parking lot and after making sure they are alone he approaches him. “Hey.”

“Hey, Jay,” Al replies with a sigh, not exactly happy to see him as he knows what this discussion is going to be about. He is not very keen about the whole situation and does his best to stay neutral.

Jay senses his discomfort. “Man, I am sorry, but I need to ask. What is your opinion on this?” He asks gingerly with a silent voice.

Alvin straightens up and releases a sigh again. “I see Voight’s reasons to be extra careful about this case. It's not easy for him either. He doesn’t want to hurt you, Jay. You can’t take it personally.” He says as he tries to fix the problem he thinks Jay might have.

“He said he needs whole week with me. A week. What does that mean? Am I gonna be off the usual work? Is he gonna…, is he-” Jay starts throwing other problems onto him and is cut off.

“I don’t know, Jay. We… didn’t exactly put a plan together about this specific part. All we agreed on was that we send you in and that Hank makes sure you will not end up as the last two guys. He would be doing it to keep you from the danger, not to endanger you.”

The younger detective listens desperately as he tries to justify why this needs to happen. He is going to see Voight in just a few minutes and doesn’t know how to look at him. He knows he is going to come to Voight this night with a consent to torture him. He doesn’t know what happens after that and how is he going to handle it. He is not sure if he feels insecure or angry or just tired of thinking about it whole night. But in Jay's world, there is no version of him refusing. 

Alvin notices the struggle that is happening insight Jay's head and decides to be more direct with him. “Jay, if you are up to this, you need to know, this is not going to be easy. Far from easy, actually.”

“Yes, I am up to it. But I wanna go straight to Valdez. Why Voight? He’s my boss, how am I supposed to work under him after whatever shit will happen on that _week_?” Jay snaps a little bit, speaking fast and loud, but shifts quickly to self-composed attitude and lifts his hand in a silent apology.

“This is part of the whole package. Make peace with it. Take it all, or leave it,”

Alvin leaves him with that and makes his way to the office ignoring that the younger man isn’t ready to end this dialog, pretending he doesn’t hear the frustrated exhalation.  He agreed to be there for him while _it_ happens, but not help him to decide if he's willing. That's up to that kid. 

* * *

It is almost seven o’clock in the evening when Jay’s last colleague, Upton, leaves. Thankfully without any more questions asked. He must have been visibly exhausted because she asked him several times during that day if he is okay and made some points on how silent and not communicative he appeared. He always replied with small smile and quite strong excuse how he got stuck in front of a Netflix watching the new season of Stranger Things. He was lucky she didn’t watch the show and he didn’t have to discuss all about it. His mind was occupied with completely different strange things, and to his regret, he didn’t get the chance to see the show yet.

He waits five minutes after she leaves, then gets up from his chair checking if the office is in fact empty, unpleasant sensation in his stomach - and he thought that saying yes will be the easy part. He hasn’t seen Alvin except this morning which makes his agitation even worse as he realizes he must deal with Voight alone. He already felt like under his influence earlier that day because he was ordered, along with Upton, to spend whole day outside in the freezing cold on a watch. His body is tired after trying hard not to freeze out there, especially after sleepless night and his face and hands has been on fire since he entered their well heated office.

He makes few difficult steps towards Voight’s office and opens the door without a knock. “Sergeant?”

“Come in,” Voight makes a slight smile and leans to the back of the chair, noticeably doing nothing but thinking and waiting.

Jay refuses to close the door, he rather stays only a yard from the door frame. For a moment, he considers starting to speak about the ongoing case he’s working on with Upton, but then decides to skip it as it is already hard to control his voice. All day of re-thinking did not change his mind in the slightest and he knows that if he wants to get this over with, he must cooperate with all he’s got. And there he goes straight for it.  

“I understand the concept, sarge,” he begins sounding more convinced than he is. The sooner he complies to Voight, the sooner he gets to go to Valdez. “So… you have my consent.” Jay finalizes the statement to be perfectly clear and puts his emotionless face on.

Voight keeps the silence for a moment as he is giving Jay time to add some commentary. “Good.” He nods when nothing comes from Jay and takes his eyes from him. “I hope you have a free weekend. I’m gonna take you to my house. Then I will give you a day off. After that we will see.” Voight stands up and starts to put on his jacket. “Meanwhile, I’ve got a guy who is taking care of your cover, adjusting and cutting of your ties to the police. Hopefully you’ll be on Valdez’s radar same time next week.”

“Sounds good.” Jay takes in the information Voight shares without asking any questions and even feeling a little unsettled, he manages to reply. So, from now until the end of the weekend it makes 58 hours, he calculates quickly. A lot could happen during duration this long. They exchange a quick glance before Voight touches his shoulder to lead him out of the precinct, making Jay feel as a consensual prisoner. Then he makes an unfortunate connection with sexual sadomasochistic technique and promptly stops his mind flow before it can make him feel sick. 

The ride to Voight’s house is awkward. Both police men feel the tension in the car which grows with every yard they pass and every minute they get closer to the finish. Voight seems calmer on the outside but if Jay would look at him, he would see the affliction. And even Jay is trying to look calm too, his breathing is more audible than he wishes, which is not something that Voight appreciates.

When the car stops in front of the house, they just sit there for a second, their seat belts still on, still no word uttered. Voight waits for Jay to make the first move wanting him to express a little bit of free will on this. Jay comes to similar realization and unbuckles the seat belt focusing on his hands as he feels they may shake, and is happy when he manages to do it steadily. Then he steps out of the car and waits for Voight to follow him inside his house.

* * *

Once they are behind the closed door, Voight invites his detective to sit in the kitchen, then pours two glasses of Whiskey and hands one of them to Jay. “I am not starting this unless you are sure, Jay.”

“Voight,” Jay’s response comes fast. “I am sure. Trust me.” He accepts the glass and takes a sip. As the tawny liquid burns in his throat in the distasteful way, he smirks and makes an eye contact with his boss. “Already started?” he jokes in attempt to relax and is glad when his boss smiles back at him.

This is good, this is what both need, a touch of cheap alcohol and one small smile. Then they can transition into more serious manner.

“So,” Jay starts, not really knowing what he’s going to say, but he uses this word to indicate that he is going to say something. “I’ve read the reports.” He takes another sip and watches as Voight drops his eyes on the floor and nods.

“And?”

“Umm, I’ve been trained for this, I’ve been trained to survive, I’ve been trained to resist to an interrogation. What I haven’t been trained for is to endure that amount of suffering for someone’s amusement. And we know that’s the main reason he is doing this… entrance shit. At least to some point, while the …recruits… are reacting to his fashion.” He finishes the drink but continues quickly. “I have no idea what your plan is nor I want to know it. But I am quite sure you won’t do anything too hard… too cruel, too severe, because that would compromise this whole case. And honestly…” he question-marks at the end, “that removes the threat.” He shrugs as a gesture that he has said all he wanted.

Voight is surprised by his words but hides it successfully with respect on his face. “I don’t need you to be afraid or feel threatened, Halstead. I need the opposite. I need you bold and fearless. So, this is good.” Both men nod their heads slightly to acknowledge their stances. Voight appreciates his own previous thought to send Alvin home because now he can have this conversation. He doesn’t need him from the start.

“Voight, I meant the real threat. I don’t think I am completely reconciled that I am going to be drilled by you this way. I…, I don’t feel very comfortable.” Jay admits with a shaky voice which doesn’t even annoy him.

“I realize that.” Voight loses the sight at him and keeps silence for a minute, thinking if he should admit his own discomfort and decides not to as it’s plainly imminent and not overly needed in his position of a tormentor. “That’s why I want Alvin to support you in this whole process. He will join us later tonight.”

“Good cop, bad cop?” Jay makes stupid joke second time in this conversation with the difference that the first time he opened it and this time he’s closing it.

“Somethin’ like that,” Voight smiles, not as much as the first time, but still. “So, do you think you are ready?”

“Yes, sir,” comes the answer.

* * *

Voight guides the detective through the hall to the door leading to the basement with neutral expression on his face and without word. Jay is not surprised when Voight directs that way, he couldn’t put the picture of them into his boss’ living room when he tried to play the scenery in his head but as he steps into the basement he is taken aback because this room does not fit to his imagination either.

He’s visited this room once in the past and at the moment he feels like he’s never been there before. It is cold and empty, only four walls made of bricks with a few pipelines protruding from the walls here and there. Jay draws in a deep breath as he realizes that his boss did his homework and made some preparations for the task. He searches the place for any tools which he also put into his imagination and seeing none he exhales slowly and silently, mentally setting himself in the role. Then waits for instructions.

“This is gonna be your suite for the weekend,” Voight says downplaying the situation a little, however, no humor in his voice apparent.

Jay says nothing, though his boss is giving him the space for it, he rather uses it to recalculate the time he is supposed to stay in this chilly room. 57 hours and a something till the Sunday midnight, he results displeasingly, but doesn’t show it as he is positive about his decision to make this work.

Voight ends the moment of silence with his first instruction. “Now, please, take off your clothes,” he motions to his upper body, “you can keep on your pants and shoes,” he finishes quickly and waits, hoping this request will be accepted without any protests.

Jay begins to remove his leather jacket slowly, then the hoodie, both handing over to his sergeant, no complains said, no complains displayed. As he starts pulling his t-shirt up, he braces himself to accustom to the chillness that adamantly wraps around his chest. His skin reacts to the cold swiftly even before the t-shirt is passed to Voight. “Thank you for the shoes,” Jay says quietly. He knows that if this was done properly, he would lose the shoes and the pants too. Stress positioning in the cold places was clean torture technique which could leave no permanent damage or could kill. He knows very well that even with pants and shoes on he’s going to be numb with cold within a few hours which was sufficient for their purpose, he guesses.

Voight nods, then takes a few stairs up to the hall to put Jay’s clothes down. On the way back, he pulls out his handcuffs from his back pocket and positions himself in front of one of the pipelines. “Come here, your back to the wall,” he instructs and takes Jay’s left wrist, shackling him to the pipe. “Now, be careful not to break the pipe. First, there’s cold water flowing inside it, second, you would pay for the repair.”

The last sentence makes Jay chuckle. “How long?” he asks, disliking the cold environment already. “You know I hate cold,” he declares then, without waiting for an answer, assuming Voight will not share his plan.

“I do,” Voight glares at him, small delight in his eyes could be find if someone searched for it. He silently walks away from Jay, closing the door behind him.

The basement becomes silent instantly, not even Voight’s steps noticeable. Jay searches the place again, more carefully this time as he is not disturbed with his boss’ presence. No watches, no window, nothing that could help him to orient in time. He grimaces at the thought to count endlessly and decides to count lately. Standing in the cold cellar is not so bad for the time being.

He checks the handcuffs, discovering that Voight tightened them quite thoroughly, the cold metal in contact with both sides of his wrists. He suppresses a hiss as he cautiously leans against the frigid wall, investigating possible ways to relax his muscles when needed. His investigation continues with a try to turn and check the route of the pipe learning that this particular one goes outside the wall only a few inches and then back in. If this situation was real, he would look for options to escape and it is obvious that without breaking the pipe, he has no chance to escape, or to free himself, or to simply sit on the ground. Naturally, being the situation real, he would not hesitate to break the pipe cold water or not and employing it as a simple weapon.

Only the question of managing it stays unanswered and he wonders about it for a moment. He smirks at the thought of trying to pull it out of the Voight’s wall, weighing the cons and pros and eventually considering that it could be exactly what Voight wants, contrary to what he said before he left him there. Maybe for the better, this thought ends rejected. He is in there only few moments and decides to patiently await what Voight’s intentions are.

In attempt to shake the coldness off himself his body shudders and Jay is content to see it work. Unfortunately, not for long as the stream of his thoughts focuses on the cold instead of options how to get away. Occupy the mind with anything else than the current moment – that would be the lesson here.

He regrets he refused to count the time before, because now he is not sure if it was five minutes or half an hour that passed and for later, it could mean big difference. He makes a mental note, that if the situation was real, he must count, even if no duration estimate would be given to him. However, he’s certain that there is 55 hours left, at least.

* * *

Two hours pass before Jay chooses to cheat a bit and leans against the wall, muscle fatigue manifesting. The stone-cold temperature doesn’t bother him so much anymore as his skin decreased to similar levels and became insensitive. Head resting against the wall too, he closes his eyes and forces himself to take several deep but discontinuous breaths as the uncontrollable shivers in his chest interrupts it.

For the sake of his positive approach, he reminds himself that his situation is self-imposed, even the uncomfortable position, even the stiffness in his legs, even the stinging in his fingers. He accepted this, the whole package, even if it means receiving the cold he hates.

Another three or four hours pass - he is not so sure anymore as the counting was disturbed by several diverting inner fights. The longest period of cold-free perception was granted by a simple question – would Erin approve this? He concluded one big no from her mouth at the end with a bitter laughter, although her participation landed on his mind too. But the _no_ fit her better.

For the first time since she left, he feels okay to think about her, even relive some memories with her. Looking sad, he admits the acting torment facilitated the fact he lost her for good. He admits, he might be okay without her and he reluctantly admits he maybe, just maybe, does not want her anymore. He will never forgive himself for screwing up, for letting her down, but he is sure now, he is able to make peace with the unlucky ending. Because he has to.

He becomes nervous, too many hours passed (maybe five, maybe eight, he is not sure and hopes it is only low motivation that his counting is so bad) and his shivering and shallow breathing is completely noticeable. Every movement makes his muscles and joints protest and changing the two positions – straightened or leaning on the wall – doesn’t bring any relief. If he tried to rethink the attempt to free himself from the wall, he might be now up for breaking the pipe. Better not think about it then.

During the last hour, he struggles with the lack of sleep, surprised that it didn’t catch up with him sooner. He tries to heal it with controlled micro sleeps but failing to control it he ends up waking up startled, falling on random sides accompanied with pressing pain in his wrists. As it irritates him more than being sleep deprived, he shakes his head couple times to diverse the urge to get couple more seconds of sleep and focuses on the door, silently asking Voight to return, to change the scene, to let him sit, to let him heat up a bit, because this is getting too much to bear.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I quite like that before Voight gets to something more "drastic" he makes Jay physically exhausted so he'd be distracted and not so focused on Voight.  
> Any ideas on torture methods? What could Voight do to Jay? I am a bit struggling with that :D


	3. Chapter 3

The night sky is so bright that Alvin can’t take his eyes from that radiant parade of stars that consequently caused this cursed weather. If it only wasn’t today. Today when they put their colleague, their friend, into a literal fridge. From the ghostly plume that forms with his every exhale, he can declare tonight is the worse that Jay could pick, if he could pick it at all. 

As if there wasn’t enough of hurt on the world already.

With a sudden haste, he stops staring up and quickly enters Voight’s house leaving out any knocks on the door. He calls out for Voight, not too loud, but loud enough to make his presence noticeable.

“Is Jay still down there?” he asks straightly when he spots Voight sitting in the kitchen, staring to his laptop.

Voight only looks up at him and then focuses his eyes back to the screen that shows the answer.

“Are you watching him all the time?”

“No.” Hank admits with slight hint of guilt in his voice.

“How long is he inside?”

“Seven hours.”

Alvin’s eyes go a little wider in disbelief. He knew about this part, he only imagined it would be shorter. Seeing Jay’s figure on the monitor forces him to close his eyes but he manages to reopen them. It really is happening.

 Jay is momentarily caught in despair and makes several visible attempts to pull down the handcuffs, irritating his skin even more, he fails, as expected. But the pain helps him to get out of the drowsiness so he is sharply awakened for another few minutes of full-taking the dull chills.

“How’s he doing? When’s the last time you check up on him?”

“Seven hours ago.”

“I’m going in,” Alvin announces because that’s what he is supposed to be here for and he just can’t leave the kid alone any longer.

 

* * *

 

The temperature in the room is not as bad as outside but it is lower than Alvin would like. In years of his service he learned to deal with things he dislikes and his ignorance towards it is quite impressive. Truth is, that what he feels right now can’t be described only by dislike. There’s disgust too. And guilt. Not that one of those wasn’t present in the years of his police expertise as a regular feeling, but this is happening now and it’s going to last for a while. And he’s going to watch it, he’s going to help it. And a good person he respects, is in the middle of all that. 

Jay breathes out Alvin’s short name as soon as he enters, as if his personality meant salvation.

“Jay,” Alvin calls softly, glad that the young man recognized him so quickly but unnerved by the tone his name comes to his ears. So pressing. With five long steps, he gets next to him, examining his condition.

“Are you good?” Is the less stupid question that comes up to his mind, so he questions it while taking in the blueish lips, pale color, clattering teeth and uneven shivers.

“I…t-think s-so.”

Alvin reaches his hand up in attempt to ease the shivers with a touch on his shoulder, but as the cold skin connects with his warm palm, it elicits the opposite reaction and Jay is seized by line of violent tremors. He takes the hand off immediately, apologizing.

When it subsides, he seems more still than before, so maybe there was some success in Alvin’s small gesture.

“What about your hands? Fingers? Can you feel them?” Alvin inspects, slowly extending his hand behind Jay’s back, finding the top of his fingers, relieved they still appear in acceptable vital red shade.

Jay only nods closing his eyes, afraid that if he talks, he would be subdued by another uncontrollable shake. He can sense the warmth coming from Alvin’s body and right now for him it’s like for an abstinent smelling the scent of alcohol, which is not exactly helping, because he cannot have it.

“Jay?” Alvin demands a verbal answer, as he continues to hold his icy fingers, not believing it’s alright.

“Yea…, hurts on touch but it’s fine.” He manages to say.

“Okay.” Alvin steps back, divesting Jay of the only chance to get a small glimpse of warmth. He looks around the place to gather a courage to ask another question. “You think you can hold on a little longer?”

Jay successfully hides the genuine reaction on this, but doesn’t answer straight away either. His wishes are far away from this room, but his wishes are not important right now. So he nods again. And this time, he manages to give Alvin also the verbal answer before he requests it.

Alvin nods back, almost disappointed and definitely not convinced, but he doesn’t expect different answer. “I’ll come back in a while. Okay?” He informs and disappears quickly.

Jay’s hopes are him to stay by his side, if only to have someone who would keep him from falling asleep. But whatever, at least he doesn’t have to dissipate his already low energy to hold down the shaking. And there, once he’s alone, his unsteady breathing starts to emit frantic noises and when he tries to lower them, it doesn’t seem to work. His frustration getting the worst of him, he viscerally wakes up the long-forgotten hatred towards Voight. 

Alvin quickly strides to Voight with a straight thought - they have to warm up the kid right away. He catches his glance and seeing the worry in his friend’s eyes, he only sighs. This will be hard for all three of them.

“An hour, top. Then we take him here to heat up,” Alvin announces resolutely but with his soft and weary voice.  Voight can nothing but concur.

 

* * *

 

This hour feels like five even before it’s complete. For the man in the basement maybe even longer. They watch him through the webcam Voight set up into the room, taking their part on the anguish with the sight they receive, because it is not nice one.

They see him attempt to count the time again, but giving up too soon, they see him flex his hurting legs, they see him bend down a little as if it could protect his chest from the cold and improve the breathing, they see him exercise his fingers to prevent cryopathy. They can see his struggle between staying focused on the task and subduing to the frustration.

“I’ve seen enough,” Voight shuts down the laptop exactly fifty minutes after Alvin gave his ultimatum. “I go for him, you – get it ready downstairs.”

Alvin blinks several times to wipe off the picture of Jay and slowly gets up to follow Voight down to the basement.

The sound of opening the door is the best thing Jay hears during those never-ending fifty minutes. As he sees both of his _captors_ , he tenses his muscles to moderate the shaking. It still continues but not so visibly.

“Glad to see me?”

Jay shoves out a sigh of smile through his nose not really amused by Voight’s question. The reaction is more about the irony of being pissed at Voight and being glad to see him at the same moment. He would be much happier if he stopped staring at him and released him for at least a couple of minutes. To take a couple of warm breaths. Oh, that would be nice.

But Voight continues to just stand opposite to him and stare.

“How many hours did you count?”

Now, that’s not nice. He should have known Voight will be interested in this answer.

“Not s-sure.” He answers finally with the shortest reply he came up with, angry that he didn’t manage to say it without a stutter.

“How many?” Voight repeats.

Let’s take a guess. He got to about three hours with approximate counting, but didn’t count not even the half of the time he’s spend here. That would make six to eight hours. Knowing the time perception may be a lot exaggerated in his case, he decides to go for seven. However, he feels like it was double at least.

“Not bad estimate,” Voight nods regardfully and again continues to stand and stare.

“What now?” Jay asks reluctantly and nervously, not expecting to get the correct answer. His whole body hurts and he won’t be able to keep up with this conversation much longer.

Voight finally fishes a key out of his pocket and unlocks the cuffs. Jay’s hands don’t feel like his own when he starts to massage his tender wrists, unhappy to find he can’t move with his fingers properly, not at all to clench them into a fist and when he yet tries, it burns like hell.

“Can you walk?”

He hears his boss ask and shakes his head in agreement. Maybe next time he should try it before answering, he thinks, when he stumbles and ends up in Voight’s arms. “Sorry.”

“Just take it easy…” Voight advices, not surprised much with Jay’s annoyance.

Jay uses the wall rather than Voight’s shoulder to steady himself and before making another step he breathes deeply. Putting his entire weigh on one of his legs causes extreme pain that feels like his feet are completely skinless.

He tests the steps couple times while being supported by the wall and is interrupted by Alvin giving him a long sleeve t-shirt.

“Thanks,” he takes it slowly, but eager inside to put it on. It’s warm and even it doesn’t take the cold away it helps him with the shaking once it covers his whole torso.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Voight turns to the exit and Jay follows walking slowly and carefully, always with an exhale to deal with the pain easier, wondering how long it will take before they take him back here.

As they get closer to the stairwell, Jay notices a small black box with a lens on the wall and stops abruptly, face glowering.

“Is that a… You’ve been watching me all the time?!” He asks, anger in his voice clearly evident. It’s a deep humiliation that causes it and Jay just cannot accept it. Then Voight looking at him with raised eyebrows makes it even worse. “Well?” he yells.

“Yes, Jay. This is a camera.” Comes Voight’s calm reaction.

“Couldn’t you say that before?!”

“What difference would it make?” Calm again.

Jay doesn’t understand why Voight can’t see the betrayal in it. It would make a big difference to Jay but he will not share the details. It would only bring up more of the shame he feels. So he rather stays quiet and lets Voight think there’s none.

Seeing Jay is barely standing, Voight decides to ignore this incident. “Come on.” He ends the awkwardness and takes a route to the stairs.

Jay cautiously climbs couple of the stairs holding onto the wall, and when he’s accustomed to the pain from walking up, he just can’t let go of the anger. “I hope you enjoyed the show.”

Voight stops and turns around to face down at him, the stairs giving him a height advantage. “What?”

“You heard me.”

There’s a silence for a short second like when you hit a pause during a movie where a building is about to blow up. Voight looks away to search for something that would help him to gather his peace again and not finding anything, he swings his right hand at him, connecting the fist with Jay’s face. The power sends him off the stairs to the ground where he lands harshly.

Jay, not realizing he overstepped, throws a hurt look towards his boss and attempts to stand up. He fails immediately as he can’t find enough strength to fight the pain. The punch was hard but right now the immense stinging in his hands and legs is the biggest problem, because it all feels like every bone in his every limb is broken.

And this all is preventing him to get up and he feels paralyzed.

Voight isn’t finished with him. He comes to him fast and grabs him by the shoulder and the t-shirt, _helping_ him to get on his feet coarsely.

“Get up.”

Jay groans on that movement but manages to stay up even when he is thrown to the wall behind him and then pinned to it with Voight’s strong hands.

“You think I enjoy it?”

Voight shouts and taken by the adrenalin he throws another punch at him aimed to the same spot as the first one. He never stops holding Jay with the other hand to keep him standing.

Jay quickly reacts and puts his left hand in front of his face to protect himself. He knows he can’t take another.

“Hmm?” Voight pushes him against the wall again and Jay’s afraid he lost his breath. “I hate every fucking second of it! If you think otherwise, then get the fuck out of here.”

There’s a silent pause again, only Jay’s hard breathing disturbing it. Jay stares at him in dismay, not sure what to say to fix the situation. He doesn’t want to quit. He wants to finish the job – that’s the only thing not clouded by the hurt.

All he can do is to focus everything on making peace with the fact that his boss and his colleague will see him weak and desperate.

So, when regret forms on Jay’s features, Voight lets him go, stepping away.

Alvin watches all this from distance, being invisible as always, but now visibly relieved he didn’t have to intervene. When Jay says Voight’s name, he holds his breath and hopes the kid won’t make it worse with his angry mouth.

“I’m sorry.” It’s hushed and shaky, but it’s still a sorry and it counts.


	4. Chapter 4

The objects around him cannot be recognized as they are blurry and mixed with sharp light. Half of the sight is blocked by his heavy eye lids that are so desperately trying to close down. But there is a voice or a thought or a feeling that keeps reminding him he can't allow them to close. Is it something important? Maybe he can ignore it, can't he? No, what if he's in danger? What if someone else is in danger? Is that… a fire?

His eyes snap open. Where is he? A bathroom as it looks. No flames around but it's really hot. So why the hell is he shaking? He finally forms the reality in his mind and finds himself sitting on the floor of Voight's bathroom.

Means it wasn't just a weird, funny dream. It all happened. That explains the heat.

How long is he here?

"Jay!" he hears from behind the door.

Long enough, apparently. He wants to get up from the ground, but he can't make his brain to send the signals. Or maybe the body doesn't listen as it feels heavier than ever.

He blinks and when the eye lids lift up again - and he's sure it was just a second – there's Voight's figure right in front of him.

"Sorry, man, no sleeping."

Jay closes his eyes one last time, as if it could heal the exhaustion, and then his arm is grasped by Voight and he's hauled up. To his surprise, he's standing quite steadily, minus the shaking which is annoyingly persistent.

They move towards the basement again and not even the walking can't take Jay out of this episode of fatigue. For a moment it felt like he spent an eternity in that bathroom but judging by the level of his inability to keep his eyes open, it couldn't be more than minutes. There's a moment of alertness when Voight suddenly stops.

"Jay."

Yeah?

"Jay, look at me."

He finds Voight's eyes and tries hard not to blink until his eyes sting. He doesn't even realize he has been avoiding the eye contact with him. It wasn't his intention. He was just too drained.

"I know you are upset…"

Not anymore.

Wait, he didn't say that aloud?

"…and at this point, I don't really care."

This just makes him smile, but only inside.

"It might get even worse…" Voight suspends his monologue, wondering if Jay is even listening. "I need you to tell me, if you're okay. If you are good to go on with it."

He undoubtedly looks like he's going to pass out any second, so it makes sense Voight wants to hear he's physically alright. It's hard to prove that when his body would rather give up and put itself to a restful sleep.

"I'm just tired," Jay assures with all confidence he can gather. "It'll go away if you keep me busy."

Voight seems fine with this answer so he resumes the tour to the basement, assuming, Jay is speaking from experience.

* * *

From the first look it's clear what is going to follow. Jay expected this sooner rather than later, it was written in the pathology reports of these poor guys. They had water in their lungs. It didn't kill them directly, but in the last days of their lives, they had endured some form of drowning.

Although seeing a tub full of water and a reclining table doesn't surprise him, he is obviously dejected. Entering the cold room doesn't do him any good either, he is not sure if it is cold or heat he feels, and all his body can conclude from that, is sending him into short shivering fits. He can't even imagine what the cold water is going to do to him.

"Jay, this has one rule. I have no plans on calling 911 and not at all – your brother. So, you directly inhale some water, you're out. Do you understand?"

Jay quickly goes years back and tries to search fast through the ugly memory of the act he experienced during his training. Is there even an option to avoid that?

"Serge…"

"Do you understand?"

"I do," he affirms, because there is obviously no way around it. But it wouldn't be fair to kick him out just for this. "Inhaling water doesn't necessary mean I'm gonna need a hospital or..."

"I don't care. That's my rule." Voight can read the disapproving look on the detective's face but he has no intentions to stand down. This is already risky enough. "Take it as a motivator."

"You think it's better if I just stop breathing by myself," Jay tries to negotiate the last time with not exactly gentle tone.

The patience Voight's got with him nearly hits the bottom. "Damn it, Jay!" he snaps and goes against him, but seeing Jay making a defensive step back, stops him. He doesn't want to worsen it for the kid any more right now.

"I take it as you've already been through this…" Voight says after few seconds of silence trying another approach.

Jay takes a quick glance at the table, then blinks. "Yeah." He admits. "Never by a hand of someone who intended to actually kill me." It's mainly the concept of this being done to him by a true enemy that terrifies him.

Over this quite significant detail, it was extremely scary experience. He hated it before, and he knows he is going to hate it now. He doesn't even remember how long it took him to break down during the training, but he did. He caved in as everybody else at some point as it was designed. He definitely pleaded them to stop. And they just worked on him incessantly, so he probably promised them to tell everything, even there was nothing to tell, because his oxygen deprived brain just grasped on some hallucination and decided to give it away for a bit of air.

About that he isn't sure as he can't recall that part.

"Well, I'm not gonna change that, you know that." Voight's voice pulls him out of the memory. "But you must realize that I'm the person who sets the rules. So if I say you're gonna do something, you do it."

"Right." Jay gives his answer and almost feels nostalgic. "Okay." Naturally, it seems easier to simply agree than uphold it. If he can't, he'd deal with it when that happens. For now, he's just going to assume he can.

Jay mentally braces himself and moves towards the table on his own accord wondering at the lack of self-preservation. He completely gave himself up to Voight.

"No," Voight stops him. "First, I want you to just put your head under the water. And hold, as long as you can."

This is much easier than pure waterboarding. Jay is clearly confused, his eyes travel to Alvin, who – yes, indeed – still stands in one of the corners and doesn't even look bored.

Giving it a second though, the water might not be so friendly while the chills are still taking over him and the temperature of it is most likely to be close to freezing. There is going to be a nasty fever when it's over. No doubt.

He obeys without a word and makes a few steps to the tin tub, then gets down on his knees against the longer side of it. He tests the water with his fingertips, but the sensitivity in them doesn't seem to help with assessing the temperature. It's cold, that he knows.

Voight positions himself next to him and watches as his detective takes a few deep breaths and then dips his head slowly under the water.

If the water was cold against the skin on his fingers, he would have to amplify that word by ten to describe how it feels against his head. Jay opens his eyes to compose himself after the first shock but closes them quickly as it causes him another one. He rather focuses only on holding his breath and does his best to ignore the biting pain on random places all over his head.

As long as he is in charge of the emerging, this is okay.

"When you come up…" Voight speaks while staring at his watch, "breathe  _three_  times and then go back under."

Jay can hear him, muffled a bit, but well enough to understand. Still quite okay with the lack of breathing, worse with the frozen-like head.

"You're gonna stay under the same as now, plus five seconds. Understand?"

Shit. He didn't count the time. Again. He starts, but knows it's late.

"If you don't, I will hold you down."

He should have known the self-control won't last long. He gets to ten seconds and even there's still some reservoir in his lungs, he rather emerges. He doesn't exhale and inhale right away, first he clears his vision and tries to deal with the icy drops of water that travel down from his hair and face on his body and then re-focuses on the breathing. Only three breaths.

And the stupid shivering cuts off one of them.

He does want to comply the instructions though, so he minds it not and submerges again.

There's no way he can estimate the period of time he should stay in the water, so the hand on his neck doesn't surprise him as he slowly tries to go up several tens of seconds later.

"Fifteen more, Jay," Voight announces, slightly pushing his head deeper into the water.

Jay grips the edge of the tub, fifteen more he can do, but it's the limit. When Voight's touch disappears, he goes up quickly and starts breathing fast and loud, facing away from Voight.

"You good?" Voight touches his shoulder and turns him to see his face.

Jay manages only few nodes as the spoken words would steal him the very much needed oxygen.

"Okay. Couple more breaths and then we go again."

Nothing else expected.

And there he is again, under the water.

"If you go up sooner than you're supposed to, I will add two seconds to the limit."

Even Jay's counting is not bad and the lung capacity neither, however not professionally trained, he receives the penalty of the two seconds more times than he would like and he soon ends up twenty seconds above his limit, so he gets to the point when Voight keeps him down every time. They both know that Jay never meets the desired goal, not even when held down.

* * *

It is around fortieth round of submerging when Jay begins to struggle against Voight, attempting to grasp the hand that holds him and pull it away. Not succeeding, he slams against the tub with his other hand, indicating it's too much. He's going to pass out any second. But Voight's grip only tightens around the back of his neck and Jay can also feel his boss standing right behind him as to stabilize him in that position.

Alvin, who never stopped monitoring the time, including the 'pluses', raises. That's all Voight needs to loosen the grip. He doesn't release Jay completely, just allows him to straighten up.

"Five breaths and two more seconds." Voight reminds emotionlessly.

"No," Jay breathes out, shaking his head in disbelief. No, no, no. His inhales don't even feel like they fully end in his lungs as it seems like the organ is not in right place. He doesn't find the strength to argue anymore and before he manages to count the fifth breath, he is back in the embrace of the water.

It takes only few seconds before Voight feels the body beneath him squirming quite strongly and he takes it as a good sign until it doesn't seem controlled anymore. Then he lets him go.

Once it done, Jay pushes himself away from Voight with energy that his body magically acquired in order to survive. He ends up laying on his side and grasping for air, probably blacking out for unnoticeable moments.

He catches Alvin's voice saying something, but he doesn't have time to ask him to repeat. He would die if he concentrated on anything else then breathing. His colleague seems to understand that because he repeats the words over and over.

"Just breath… yeah, slowly."

Ah, he was soothing him.

"Tell me if you hear me now."

He looks up at him and nods. When the breathing improves he's instantly attacked by tremors, the t-shirt that was giving him warmth about an hour ago, now seizing him in an ice barrier.

"Good," Alvin places his hand on Jay's head and glances at Voight who signals him to get Jay back up.

Being unsure about how to announce to the already devastated kid, that they are going to ruthlessly continue, he basically just supports him and puts him up into kneeling position by himself. Voight should be the one who tells it.

"What?" Jay exclaims when it clicks to him, wavering voice evident even in that short word.

"Jay," Voight bends down to face him but doesn't even bother to catch his glance as the detective has obvious issues with sharpening the vision.

Jay just blinks rapidly, trying to focus on Voight and figuring out how to handle god knows how many more rounds of this. Plus, there is still the inferior waterboarding awaiting.

"Only short periods under…"

"I…c-can't," Jay hitches in the middle of tremors and he hates himself for saying that out loud.

"Jay, I need you to show me you have it under control even like this," Voight provides a reasonable explanation, getting up and setting himself behind Jay again.

"Just focus on the parts when you  _can_  inhale. Nothing else." With that simple advice, he slowly presses his head down. There is no way that the kid is going under the water voluntarily.

He keeps him down for ten seconds only, then pulls him out. The intervals of letting him breathe are long enough and for a while it looks like Jay is coping just fine.

It is until one of the sharp inhales he takes right after the emerging, sends him into coughing. It's not from a water inhalation, no, he did very good job at keeping Voight's rule and Voight is very aware of it and proud. But as Jay doesn't allow any water to flow into his mouth, his throat gets dry and every inhale hurts, eventually causing the cough.

It tires him to the point where even ten seconds without fresh air is impossible. And so is Jay again held down with what feels like brute force. He fights against it, but is unable to overpower it.

Finally, when the water around him vanishes, he coughs again and it's killing him. Voight lets him go only to make him fall off, completely exhausted, the edges of the tub keeping him from collapsing entirely.

Voight rubs his face to hide the mess in front of him at least for a moment, and then carefully puts Jay's shaking figure down on the ground, where he leaves him to rest for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this was very loooong proccess. Whew. It's funny how talent works. I am a musician and I can compose a song like in ten minutes and it would be good. And then I spend more than ten hours (yes, really) writing this 2,5k words long chapter and it is still not good enough to match the quality of my 10 minutes song.
> 
> Just lol .D
> 
> Anyway. Waterboarding next time! Even harder I guess :)


	5. Chapter 5

 

Considering everything that happened in last few hours, the lack of sleep, food, warmth and oxygen, he feels like in bliss just lying there, looking up at the gray ceiling, breathing and shivering. The soaking wet t-shirt is sticking to his skin and although it’s irritating, he is so out of strength that even if they brought him a dry piece of cloth, he wouldn’t be able to move in order to change. So, it is maybe a good thing that neither Voight or Alvin appear in his sight with some clothes.

Actually, he can’t see them at all. Where did they go?

He turns his head a little to extend his field of vision. Nothing. It’s strange, but he doesn’t want to be alone. Besides, the incredible lethargy is slowly crawling back in enhanced level.

To gather some energy to speak, he closes his eyes for a moment and swallows. “Voight?”

Maybe they want him to sleep, so why should he fight it. His body is in such a state of exhaustion that even the shivering stopped for most of the time. He needs it, even if it was only for a minute.

He waits a while and when no answer comes, he takes it as a permission to fall asleep and closes his eyes to submit to a liberating sleep.

 

* * *

 

As it may seem like it to a person who’s just been drowned to almost unconsciousness, they don’t leave the basement. They only withdraw to the side where they cannot be easily seen. Alvin makes an attempt to approach the laying detective but is stopped by Voight’s hand. After that they only watch him to turn on his side and doze off.

 

“Give him a minute or two,” Voight states, voice low.

Alvin would give him hours if it was an option, but minutes will do. Especially when the ground is rough and cold and the kid is still fighting off the effects of hypothermia, even in his sleep.

“Stay with him,” Voight adds and leaves the basement. It suddenly seems so crowded and full in there and it disturbs him. He is supposed to be good at this, no matter who the target of his actions is. He watches his hand shake a bit as he reaches for a glass with that torturous liquid and curses himself. When did he started to be so fond of that kid? Then he thinks that it wouldn’t be any easier even if he didn’t like him at all. He is still part of his team, part of his life.

Hank closes his eyes and breathes deeply. It may take some effort but it is just a few twists and turns to kill the guilt and compassion.

Alvin is not surprised to see Voight coming back with emotion free face, it was obvious to him that the sergeant hit some limits while manhandling Jay and he needed to find a way how to break them. Except that it was too soon for his liking.

“You wanna get him on that table, give him a break.” This time it’s Voight who gets stopped.

Questioning his decision is not what he needs right now after he regained the lost determination. “Alvin, it hasn’t been even ten hours since we started this. I’m not backing off.”

“Hank,” Al tries again but knows it’s in vain. “At least, let me wake him up.” He wants to be useful somehow. Truth is, observing this business, doing nothing, is not exactly a walk through a green garden either.

Voight only rises his eyebrows in response and steps away with a shrug to clear the way towards his detective. Alvin approaches him from behind, taking his forearm as a precaution to any quick movements of defense. Alvin would probably appreciate such a move because it would mean the younger man has still some energy to fight.

“Jay,” he places the other hand on the detective’s shoulder and shakes with him. There is only small subconscious reaction so he repeats the name couple times and rolls him to lay on his back. “Wake up.”

As if they were a code words to wake Jay up, it works immediately and his blue eyes open. They seem confused for a second but when the intense shivering starts again, all goes back to him quickly.

“Can you stand up?”

Jay is hundred percent sure that all he can manage is to go back to sleep, so he refuses to reply with hopes it will speak for itself.

“I wouldn’t expect Valdez is gonna show him any signs of nice behavior.” Voight raspy voice sounds in the room.

“Okay, come on.” Point taken, partially. Alvin extends his hand to help the younger man get on his feet However they are trying to prepare Jay for Valdez, they will not be able to simulate the same thing he is about to endure. So, what does it matter if he takes more gentle approach.

Jay mostly ignores Voight’s comment; his legs are supporting him just barely and he needs to focus on mere standing. He’s glad he doesn’t get any other question or instruction for the time being. He notices Voight positioned next to the table, making it apparent that he’s waiting for him to lay on it. Laying doesn’t sound so bad right now. And there’s going to be a little time to get his head straight before they strap him down and set the table into correct inclination.

With that he voluntarily walks towards his boss.  

What was he supposed to think about while water-boarded? He tries to remind himself when he gets closer to the table. The tight feeling in his chest that grows with it, isn’t anything he welcomes cheerfully. He doesn’t want this. Really doesn’t.

Despite that, he ends up lying on it, the metallic surface worsening the cold, but so far it is quite fine to give a rest all his muscles. He feels the first strap being tightened over his legs, second around his stomach and third restraining his chest, pinning his whole figure to the board. This goes too quickly or at least it feels like only seconds.

“Jay, you with us?” He hears when Voight finishes tying his wrists and it is more the fact that his rest time is almost up that returns him back to reality, rather than the voice speaking to him. “You haven’t said a word.” It’s Alvin who is speaking to him and sounds worried.

“Uhm,” Jay clears his throat, “I am.” He simply answers the initial question because that costs him the minimum. His senses tell him that the energy supply he’s got is not enough to withstand a waterboarding but maybe he is mistaken. Hopefully he is mistaken.

“So you’re ready to continue…”

No.

“Yes.”

The table is still flat, there is no water container in Voight’s hands and no cloth over his face, so there’s still some window between now and the first water spill. Means good, he can afford to lie and say yes.

But most of it changes very fast so when the icy water lands on his face while it’s not covered by anything, it startles him. He attempts to avoid it but the water follows his movements adamantly, slowly filling his sinuses. His eyes open when the center of impact is located around his mouth and immediately regrets. The flow redirects and irritates painfully his eye. It creates the first occasion to test the restrains around his wrists as he instinctively wants to protect the eye from more pressure. But the straps are firmly fixing him to the metal.

It doesn’t take long, before he uses all the air reserve in his lungs to expel some of the water from his nose and that’s when the panic creeps in. It’s exactly this feeling he hates. There’s water in his mouth, in his nose, on his face but more importantly he feels water even on places in his head, that he usually doesn’t _feel_. And there’s nothing he can do about it because the waterflow doesn’t stop.

The panic grows as he’s desperately trying to process what’s happening, which is not a good way how to help to control himself. But then he finds the tactic.

Breath.

That’s what he is supposed to focus on. And he does that but in very wrong way; one would say it is by accident, but it still happens and now the water travels to his lungs. Shit, shit, shit. No.

No matter how small amount of the water it is, he starts panicking more and if Voight didn’t immediately stop pouring the water, he would probably inhale some more from the shockwave. 

“What the hell?!” Voight scolds at the now coughing Jay slapping him over his face in the process. It is not so much an anger that emits from Voight’s posture, it is frustration and maybe a disappointment. Jay grimaces and looks for words to apologize for violating the only rule that has been set, but even if he finds some, he can’t speak as every inhale prolongs the coughing.

“If you want to end this, just say it for fuck’s sake!”

“No… no.” Jay shakes his head, he absolutely doesn’t want it to look like he’s playing it this way. “I don’t.” He tries and hopes that the sergeant takes it, because it would be grandly bizarre, if he had to beg him to continue. “I messed up, I know. Sorry,” he adds when his breathing stabilizes and Voight still doesn’t look very happy.

Voight clenches his jaw as he concentrates on chasing away the thought about ending this whole thing. He would love to end it, it’s exhausting for all three of them and he doesn’t wish anything else than to take the kid to warm bed and then get some sleep by himself.  Moreover, the _sorry_ from a man who is getting hurt is just sad.

“You ready now?” Voight decides, feeling obligated to give him a second chance.

Jay remembers how he felt just a seconds ago with his head filled with water, which makes it hard to reply. “We’ll see.”

“Okay,” Voight seems more satisfied with this answer than with simple yes. “Don’t think too much,” he provides an advice and receives a nod from Jay.

In fact, Jay feels more certain this time, at least he is awake enough to see the water fall and to close his eyes and drive in enough of air. Unfortunately, the water causes the same evil as it did the last time and it is everywhere, so it’s not any easier. At all. He begins to wriggle against the strapping, soon realizing there is a hand on his shoulder keeping him down, preventing him from moving away from the water.

It stops, for a tiny moment, hardly enough to spit out the water and inhale. His eyes never open so when the water comes back his mind tends to panic again. _No, no, it’s okay. It’s fine, it’ll go away and then you can breathe again. Do not panic._

He starts soothing himself as he was told to do whenever a panic attack creeps in and to his surprise, it is working quite well. He doesn’t know anymore, if he is still being held or not, he doesn’t have a time to notice. Besides it doesn’t matter, all that matter is the next breath he’s going to take in. All that matter is that this will be over any second, it won’t take longer than just a few seconds. And then it’s going to be fine. It may be fine only shortly, but then he’ll just repeats all of this over and over.

He subconsciously tilts his head to the side to get rid of the water and if he is lucky, to get in some air too. Although, it is extremely risky in the area of inhaling the water again, it’s worth it. Until Voight takes this cheat away.

“Hold his head down.” The command sounds serene and is accompanied by continuous waterfall.

_This is not good._

There’s a touch first on his left and then right temple and his head is pushed into the table. And water still pouring.

_NOT good._

Jay’s self-comforting is disrupted. _Stop, stop, stop._ Distressed noises sound inside him as it is the last thing he can manage, but soon after that, not even a simple sound can be formed. _Don’t breathe._ Don’t, don’t, don’t.

He comes out of this completely worn out. First, second and third inhales hurt like hell because they are the sharpest ones, but it doesn’t bother him as long as it provides the oxygen. Oh, and his wrists hurt too. Where did he get the strength to defy the straps that it hurts, he doesn’t know. Slowly, his eyes open as he realizes that this pause may be a longer than the previous ones.

Before the blurry figures in front of him sharpen, a cold wetted fabric is cast over his face, blocking his sight and his ability to breathe properly. Although his mouth is closed shut, some of the water ends in it through his nose. He swallows it, because he needs to breathe at least a little; that thing won't go away any time soon. The taste of the water is disgusting and makes him want to throw up, especially when he takes in some more. A defense mechanism for being sick is slow and deeper breathing, which is impossible to do for him. When he tries, his mouth is filled with water even faster, so he is balancing on the edge of the urge to throw up for the whole process.

 

He's becoming nervous when the water doesn't start to fall on the cloth, he knows it has to, before the cloth will be removed. Now he really wishes for it to get worse. The wish is granted and it's freaking bad one.

He is forced to send down to his stomach plenty of more water against his will, but that's what his body unintentionally does in order to prevent breathing the water in. When the cloth is gone, there's a lot of coughing.

"I didn't, I..." Jay finds himself explaining the cough is not caused by inhaling the water, even it was like an inch from that to happen.

"I know, kid, I know." The hand that has been on his shoulder the whole time is squeezing it now and Jay is not sure if it's supposed to comfort him or keep him from getting up to expel the water easier. He manages to get to the point when he can take a few normal breaths with that hand on him, but is completely drained.

When the cloth reappears on his face, he lets out a groan and his body tenses. It's automatic and the energy that makes it happen is not quite his. The water falls shortly after that and he is back in the course of misery.

About half an hour later, full of spluttering, unwelcome water drinking, and desperate gasping for air, his coughing turns into mix of sobbing and hitching against all his tries to lay still. He probably inhaled some water during that time period, but either it went unnoticed or Voight ignored it or understood it can't be avoided. In any way, this is the end for now. They all know it, because the detective can't control himself anymore.

 

* * *

 

They watch him very closely, silently worried with every wheezy sound that escapes the young man's lips. His face carries tormented expression and both standing men copy it.

"Sleep," Alvin spurs him when Jay opens his eyes, obviously looking for an assurance that sleeping is truly allowed. And so his eyelids slide down slowly with a visible signs of solace. He might be far from happy to fall asleep in this position and soaked through, but at least the water doesn't bother him in his throat and that's okay enough.

Voight retreats to another side of the basement and leans again the wall, sighing.

"What if Valdez was here right now. Do you think he'd let him be?"

Alvin rather doesn’t have an answer.

“Seeing it first handed, I...” Voight doesn’t end the thought, avoiding to say it out loud. He can’t send him out there. “I mean... look at him! I am just _this_ close from killing him. And I’m like a rookie compared to Valdez. He gets his hands bloody. He doesn’t care. “

“Oh, he does.” Alvin finally catches a straw to bring himself to this conversation. “He needs him. The last two kills speak to his favor,” Alvin remarks bitterly.

“I didn’t forget that,” Voight says resolutely. “Are you gonna tell him?”

“Maybe,” Al replies silently and shrugs, looking down at the sleeping figure. “It won’t make any difference for him.”

“Hmm.” Voight softly disagrees. “I don’t think so. If you bring him closer to the victims, it could give him a new course of initiative.”

Alvin turns around to look at his friend. Maybe he should admit to the kid that this all was his idea, his plan. Not only because Hank is right, but also because it is not fair to let the kid think the whole scheme is all Voight’s doing. Their prime decision was to keep some details in secret and possibly uncover them later, depending on how things turn out. “I’ll think about that.”

“Good.”

“You should get some sleep too. I’ll watch over him.” It’s been long night, and morning and Alvin wants a moment of peace. For all of them. 

“An hour.”

An hour. Not much, but acceptable. After that, Jay is going to be waken up again and this chaos starts anew. They are not even in the half of their journey. And for the laying man it hardly started. Al extends his hand and places it on Jay’s forehead, it’s moist and unsettlingly hot and the kid doesn’t even stir under the cold touch. Only the irregular but sufficient breathing lifts the weight of guilt fixing in Alvin’s chest. Until the next hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took longer than expected, loads of social life this week, so I'm sorry and then I am not :D And also this whole scene is quite long and I wanted to do the waterboarding thing in one chapter. Which I didn't manage at the end, lol. Now I am not sure if I'll skip the next rounds of waterboarding, because I've just written about 3k words about it, haven’t I? But Jay is going to get them, that's for sure, and my original plan was to cover every step of it. So maybe some short version and then move forward. Hmmmph. 
> 
> Now the Important Note (lol): When we receive the image of waterboarding on TV, it never seems so bad as it actually might be. Personally, I’ve never experienced it, surprise, right? :D But I did some research before writing this and googled a lot, cause I refused to take waterboarding like something funny and cool. And from what I've read ,I can say, it just sounds much scarier online, than on TV. So, if you get the impression that I am exaggerating, (and maybe I am), please don't kill me. Main excuse is, that various people react various ways, so this might not be so off for Jay, even as trained as he might be. 
> 
> Have a great time and I hope you enjoyed this!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little warning: I probably should have warned about this sooner :) there are some swear words. But whoever is old enough to watch CPD, is old enough to deal with them. Plus, words exist to be used! Yay. Sometimes there's nothing better than to say the great f-word! :D

Things around him are happening fast when he’s forced to come back from the darkness. First, a water is splashed on his face, which feels more like a solid hit, fortunately it’s only one-time deal, so there’s a little moment to figure out what the hell is happening and where he is. His eyes rapidly scan the surroundings and it’s no surprise he is still tied up on a table in the basement. He sees none of his _captors_ and before he can search for them, his sight is blocked by that wet fabric, he’s became so familiar with in these last moments. Now it’s being pressed harshly to his face and soon after, he’s back on the track of drowning.

When it’s finally lifted and he can draw in some air in between the coughs, he gets hit with a real fist this time, that evokes a sharp pain in his jaw as it’s the third blow he received in the same spot.

Oh god, what the fuck has happened, this was going so _nicely_ so far.

He doesn’t get a chance to ask nor to process the pain and the water ordeal continues mercilessly.

“Hank,” Alvin reacts to Voight’s fierce actions blankly.

“Al, you can go, you don’t have to be here.” Voight eyes him deeply, indicating it isn’t just an offer. “Go.” Voight repeats while pressing the fabric on the kids face. Alvin leaves reluctantly, trying to disregard the appalling gasps for air when that thing is lifted.  

“W-Wha…” Jay takes the chance to speak but is cut off quickly with another fist.

Fuck, that hurts, jesus fucking christ. Loud swearing being above his powers, Jay only whines and pulls against the restrains in attempt to protect his face from another blow, that never comes. Instead he is met with the fabric, unexpectedly. He inhales and starts coughing while the water is poured and he is so very much in trouble.

“Jay!” Voight almost yells to overcome the sound of cough. “Don’t fight, just focus!” He comments on his wriggling and lets him breathe couple times. Then his sight blackens again. Jay manages to clear his airways and somehow compels himself not to breathe.

“You’re dead if you keep on like this,” Voight mentions while serving him another dose of liquid. So Jay does his best and copes well for several more repeats without making mistakes. The problem is that until he doesn’t make any, this won’t stop. So, eventually, he swallows some of the water as well as inhales some and ends up throwing up all the water he’d drank, tilting his head on the side.

He starts panting when he’s finished, and pushing aside the discredited feeling, he just wishes for this to stop. He can tolerate this again, but not now. His head is killing him, he feels the fever and shivers playing a game with his body and his weary eyes are full of tears.

Yet, after few moments of silence, he tiredly gives up and braves for more. “Go on.” His words, said with a portion of defiance, are granted.

 

* * *

 

When Alvin rejoins them, done with waiting sideways, he sees Jay’s body unstrapped but still laying on the table, flat. He overlooks Voight and strides straight to the kid.

“Hey, you awake?” he talks to him and receives only soft mumbling as an answer. “Come on, wake up,” he rubs his chest to induce more lifelike reaction, which he gets as his touch provokes the area where the straps used to hold him. Jay flinches and opens his eyes, slightly frightened.

“Let’s take you to bed.” He grabs him by a shoulder and hoists him up to a sitting position. It’s apparent from the elevated breathing, that this simple motion exhausted Jay enough, so they take a break.

“Good?”

Jay shakes his head negatively. “Dizzy…” he explains, closing his eyes to steady himself.

“Kay, take your time.”

The world persists to spin while his eyes are closed, so they open again and Jay hopes it just passes once he adapts to changes in altitude. He lets his legs slide from the table on the ground and tries to stand up, only to start collapsing immediately as his knees and feet betray him. Alvin catches him punctually and surprisingly even Voight comes to help.

They support him from both sides almost all the way to the couch in the living room, where they drop him, strip him from the shirt and lie him down. He barely perceives it as he is already half-way asleep.

“What’s going on?” he asks in a moment of awareness. Then he thinks that formulation of this question hasn’t been the smartest one, as he registers the concerned faces of the other men. “I mean…” he tries to reconstruct the question. “Aren’t you supposed to keep me awake or something?” The crucial apprehension that drives him to ask this, is about uncertainty of him still being on the mission. After all, he’d broken Voight rule more than once, his time orientation doesn’t exist at this point, and he looks quite helpless, lifeless or dead even. But overall, he is still very much alive and still resolutely convinced that he can do this.

Voight snorts, obviously catching on the core of the matter. “It’s okay, the game’s still on. We’ll wake you up soon.”

 

* * *

 

He wakes up on his own, out of discomfort as sweat covers his body and his head feels like on fire. He looks around and sees Alvin sleeping on a chair close to him. Voight is not in the room. He checks the windows – blinds are down but still he can see it’s dark outside. Counting all the sleeping gaps variables, he concludes it could be either Saturday morning or night, or even Sunday morning, which doesn’t tell him much.

He tries to go back to sleep but his body doesn’t really take his offer. He rolls around on the couch and holds his breath to prevent hissing from pain, but still the noise from the movement gets to Alvin ears.

“You okay?” Alvin asks immediately, worried over the dejected expression.

“Yeah. Just can’t sleep.” He hates his body for it, because the tiredness attacks him quite persistently.

Alvin looks at his watch, then gets up and leaves the room only to come back after few moments along with Voight.

“How are you feeling?” Voight ask, sitting down.

“Great.”

“Hm,” Voight acknowledges and shrugs. “Okay,” he says after short pause. He would let him be for couple more hours, but seeing him annoyed from the inability to sleep, there’s no point in waiting. “Let’s go.”

The basement seems cooler than the last time he entered it, which makes him feel quite miserably and forces him to regret he didn’t try to fake the sleeping to postpone this. Folding his hands on his bare chest to keep at least some warmth to himself, he waits impatiently what comes next. The water load is still here, they might take another round with that, or something completely different.

“Lie down,” Voight points at the table.

He obeys, but his movements are hesitant. That table is probably the coldest thing in the room, so his face distorts as his skin touches the frosty metal. He really should have stayed on that couch.

“What now?” Jay breaks the awkward silence.

 A small box is placed next to his head. No more waterboarding, then. Voight opens it and pulls out a hypodermic needle of intimidating length and size. “I’ve got fifteen more pieces of these,” he shows the needle to Jay and begins to explain his plan. “I’m gonna place them right under your skin, so it stays safe. I won’t tie you up but – you can’t move, flinch, nothing or it could end badly.”

Jay swallows looking up at the tip of the needle trying not to look so surprised. It makes sense as the last Valdezes victim had body full of needles, some of them traveled deeper inside his body as he was most likely forced to fight, rupturing some organs and taking a part on the cause of death. Truth is, that when Jay sat in his living room and read the reports, he assumed that Voight skips the needle work for the dangerousness of it, and forgot all about it.

“I know you’re freezing and feeling like shit, but try to be in control of yourself. I will allow you to say stop. One time.”

Jay breathes slowly, practicing how to stay still over the shivering, but he still remembers he was practically unable to control the shaking a while back, so there’s probably no way he will be now, especially when his fever most likely spiked higher.

On the other hand, he’d never minded needles, although these thick and long ones are not easy to look at, much less to be tolerated as they dig holes in someone’s skin.

“I hope your hands are steady,” Jay says, way too much shakily for his liking, when Voight stares at him, obviously demanding some response. No assurance comes from his boss, instead he sits down on a tall stool, Jay didn’t even know about and directs his eyes to Jay’s stomach. Jay cannot see the stare, but it’s like he could feel land it on one particular area of his skin and it triggers tingling sensation as if his brain was already preparing for the sting.

When he feels Voight’s hand, he lifts his head to see it happen, but changes his mind quickly, realizing that keeping the head lifted scatters his focus. He tries to convince himself, he can manage to do it blindly. So he nervously awaits for the needle to run into his skin. And it does, too quickly. First, there’s intense sharp pain followed by not so intense but still sharp one. Second, his confused senses tell him he can hear the needle to pierce through his tissue, smashing it around.

He instinctively curls his toes and fingers and tenses the muscles on his stomach, only to find out it makes the pain worse, but at least Voight stops for that small moment. He resumes as soon as his muscles are relaxed under his hands again and leads the needle further to center of Jay’s torso.

Voight’s hand disappears, and if it wasn’t much warmer than his skin, he probably wouldn’t even notice that the first piece is done. The breath he held the whole time goes slowly out, but the anticipated relief doesn’t come. The skin around it is aching and calling for some soft touch, so he attempts to touch it.

“Don’t,” Voight grabs his wrist. “Just… hold perfectly still.”

He feels Voight’s hand on his stomach again, so he stiffens and soon after there’s second needle traveling underneath his skin closely above the first one. It’s unexpected, the detective didn’t even notice him to take it from the box. He holds his breath again as it’s seemingly safer not to move at all.

This strategy doesn’t last forever as the process is slower and slower and the time he’s able to hold his breath is shorter and shorter. Plus, irregular as he starts to shiver again. He starts shifting and bending is legs in attempt to avoid the shivering to overtake him. And when the forth needle is in place, he fails to resist to touch the spot, he looks down lifting his head to see what he’s touching, only to be admonished by Voight.

“What did I say?”

Jay breathes out desperately. “Then tie me up.” He pleads for something he’d never thought he could.

Voight stares at him with that disappointed look Jay received plenty of times by now, but then takes the leather straps and starts to secure them around the detective’s wrists and ankles.

“Happy?” Voight _asks_ sarcastically.

Jay loses the last trace of dignity he had left with this remark and takes shuddering breath. Oh god, this is just so wrong. He didn’t mind that to happen when he’d trained to be a soldier, he was young back then and full of anticipation. Now, he is broken by countless losses, broken by the system. Broken by life, that is always giving him only a glimpse of happiness in the far-away picture and then obliterates it without warning or remorse.

Happiness stopped being something he wanted lately, but he was okay with contentment. Easily, even that can be drifted away. What is worse, that he ends up on a table tortured by a person, who had recently started to mean something to him. Pitting himself.

Okay, he needs to stop doing that. There’s another needle coming in while the others still sting painfully and it won’t end nicely if he doesn’t regain his focus.  

_Don’t move. You can’t move._

Oh fuck, this just hurts too much compared to the others. Fuck, fuck, fuck, what the hell. His nails create a cut in his palm under the pain-diverting attempt but it doesn’t seem to work, Voight picked some very unfortunate path.

“Uhm... S-sarge.” He wasn’t planning to say the word so soon, but his dignity is gone anyway. “Stop.” His breathing becomes heavy and disturbed as the pain enhances even more. Oh god, the fucking word was supposed to make it stop, not to make it worse, he starts panicking, but manages not to move with his upper body.

“Hank.” Alvin steps in. “Let him just take a breath.”

 _Oh finally._ It doesn’t bring him the expected alleviation, but there is some, so it’s good. He can breathe now. And once the breathing slows down, he can also deal with the pain.

“Okay, Jay. I’m gonna continue now.” Voight watches the detective’s eyes close and his lips clamp together in order to burry any protests.

“I am sorry,” Jay turns the protests into something Voight would never expect.

“You are doing great, Jay.”

Jay doesn’t know if this moment of truce is meant to bring him some sort of gratification or to create _friendlier_ atmosphere, but it seems to work a little as both and when Voight proceeds, he only closes his eyes and takes in the misery with reconciliation.

It lasts for the sixth, and seventh and almost for the eighth as well, but at some point, it starts to be excruciating as the needle collides with a group of closely connected nerves, that enforces his right eye to drop tears. He tilts his head to the side, trying to hide it, but Voight sees it. Over that, he leads the needle further, almost proud of that kid, for remaining silent.

Once that one is in, Jay’s breathing becomes shaky again, showing visible relieve. Over the tears he watches as his boss stands up. He wants to ask for longer break, desperately, but refuses to do so. He knows it would be pointless. Soon, he realizes that Voight decided to switch the sides. Means another eight, if his math is correct. At least the relocation gives him a while to rest, but his breathing is still shaky and it disturbs him. There’s nothing he can do about it.

So, the ninth goes in even over the unstable movements of his chest and Voight leads the needle as slowly as he can to prevent any misdirection.

“I c-can’t s-stop it.” Jay stammers when Voight pulls the tenth needle from the box.

“I know.” Voight looks at the glassy blue eyes and sighs. “It’s gonna take longer.”

“N-not a good news-s.” He bursts out the _s_ as Voight pushes the needle into his skin.

“Could be worse.” Voight continues the conversation with a small smile on his lips. “I’ve got one more box of these.”

Jay lets out something that could be called a laugh. “You are kidding, right?”

Voight only glances on the man and doesn’t say anything.

“Voight.” Jay lifts his head to enforce an answer. But his bosses silence carries on, so he drops his head on the table with a frantic huff.

By the time they get to the second box, the detective is in such a state of pain, that he doesn’t even realize how many of these things are under his skin, it just hurts everywhere with every move. He doesn’t remember when was the last time he took regular breath and his lungs are tired from it. Both of his eyes are releasing tears in regular and uncontrollable streams, that no effort can hide.

He doesn’t know how that happened, that he decided not to defy Voight and just let him do what he thinks that needs to be done. Maybe it just hurt so much that it doesn’t matter how much longer he’s going to suffer. It doesn’t matter how much more pain he’s going to be in. All that matter is, that one day it will be okay.

But not any time soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, I got to the scene from the intro of this fic. Hooray. I kinda love needles *shy smile*. A lot of safe but painful fun can be done with them! It may look a little bizzare but I hope that doesn't ruin it for ya.
> 
> Btw. if I don't come up with some cool idea of torture, I'll probably end the Voight-tormentor part in next chapter and move to healing and to case-building. So if anyone wants to read some more about Voight doing nasty things to Jay, now is the best time to speak up! .)


	7. Chapter 7

Similarly, as a sinusoid ascends after getting to its bottom, Jay welcomes strangely blazed lifeforce in his mood, after feeling quite demolished. First, he doesn't want to look at Voight's handiwork, but with this newly acquired power, he does.

After few seconds of looking at his stomach crowding with needles, he drops his head back to the table, rolling his eyes up and casting a laugh.

"Oh shit," he states, sounding drunk. "It would look s-so funny if-f it wasn't inside m-me."

Voight rises his eyebrows, wondering if he should support the sudden change in his detective's behavior. "A complete masterpiece," Voight decides to play along, with a smirk and pretended pride that goes out emotionlessly anyway.

Jay laughs again and then winces as his muscles scrape against the needles. "When are you going to take them out?"

"When my hands stop shaking."

"Ah, good thinking," Jay approves, still amused.

"And you."

"I am not sure that will ever happen." Jay tries to shake off the cold, but it doesn't work as the shivers are fallout from all the anguish his body had suffered, and not only from the coldness around him.

When no reply comes and only Jay's breaths disturb the silence in the room, Jay picks another course of conversation. "This isn't so bad." He risks, hoping that Voight doesn't bring another box of needles. "I mean, it hurts, obviously. But what could I possibly do right now to piss Valdez off so much that he would decide to kill me?"

Voight glances at Al to imply he should answer that.

"We think the kid – Robert Evans – with the needles, was forced to fight." Alvin gives the answer, purposely mentioning the name of the last victim.

Jay processes the thought of fighting for a while. "Okay." He's not sure if he can stand, but what would be the point of doing this _rehearsal_ if they don't do it right. "I think you should untie me and we should fight then."

Voight doesn't say anything, only eyes him.

"Voight," Jay pulls against the restrains. "You weren't holding back while ago, so why now?"

True sharp words ring in Voight's head unpleasantly as he comes closer to the end of the table and reaches the straps to unfasten them. Then before undoing the ones on Jay's wrists, he checks the positions of needles and adjusts some of them to have the tips of them safely above the skin and visible. Jay almost jerks away from that unexpected strike of pain but then holds compliantly.

When the straps are away, Jay resists the need of touching the aching areas, knowing that he would make it worse with the touch.

"Okay, let's do it. Let's fight," Voight encourages provocatively, not really believing in any kind of happy ending.

Jay slowly and carefully sits and then swiftly puts his feet on the ground to be in standing position as quickly as possible. Expecting a wave of dizziness, he rests against the table and breathes deeply through it when it comes. The needles keep their position, so he feels positive about being able to move a little and ready to absorb the constant throbbing pain that invades his abdomen.

"Alright," Jay says more to himself.

Voight turns him by a shoulder and doesn't wait too long before punching him to the face. The hit forces him to twist slightly and way too soon, he feels the twinge from several spikes as they pierce through the skin. He immediately looks down at his stomach to see how the needles react on his movements, and grimaces on the small drops of blood. Not good.

Seeing the hesitancy, Voight waits for Jay to stabilize in a defense position with one hand protecting his stomach and upper body with the other one. Knowing he must keep a distance between them to avoid any contact with the needles, Jay waits for Voight to attack, and when he does with his right hook against Jay's face, Jay blocks it with a right hand and catches Voight by a wrist firmly, twisting it to the left, so Voight must turn a with it. The little move creates an advantage for Jay to get more closely to him with his back and slams him hard with his elbow to the side. Letting go Voight's wrist, he quickly elbows him again on the other side.

So, there are ways for him to defend himself, if this was a real fight he would aim for his head and it would give him some potential to overpower his opponent for sure.

While Voight seems momentarily indisposed, Jay recedes away, but it takes only few short steps to get close to him. Voight aims lower this time, clearly trying to make Jay break the protection of his stomach. After several bluff moves against the lower body, Voight finds an opening for hitting his face and does not hesitate to use it fully, repeating the blows until Jay loosens the arm shielding his stomach and it's easy for Voight to push the arm away and slap him across the area flooded by needles.

Jay cries out as the hand of his boss touches the irritated skin and even the weakest slap of all sends terribly painful signals to random parts of his body. Jay realizes the mistake and sets his arm to his front again, making a mental note that the arm stays where it is, no matter what.

Jay holds on that and doesn't back away even when the coppery taste in his mouth steals his attention, leading to a couple more hits that will soon produce outstanding bruises.

It's Voight who proclaims the fight as finished, scanning the bloodied spots continually poked by the needle tips that scrape and prick the skin uncontrollably. Jay protests, driven by adrenalin and the urge to ventilate the frustration from being defeated, but also driven by reluctance to get back on that table, feeling helpless. All he wishes for is soft, warm bed and more than just a few hours of sleep. He can take a beating and then raise from it quite soon, so this could serve him well as a plan to achieve that.

"I said it's enough." Voight ignores the objection.

"I'm still standing."

Voight shakes his head slowly, eyeing him skeptically. He all too well knows, what the detective is trying to do. After quickly glancing back at Alvin, he swings his fist against Jay's face, giving it all power he has. A rough cold wall catches Jay as he staggers backwards, hand pressing on his temple and eyes close shut. There's a quick thought of regret when the pain spikes higher than he was prepared for, but it all goes away with deep calming breaths that helps him to slow down his heartrate. Little by little. Until another unexpected hit comes right next to his closed eye.

A noisy slam of door draws Jay's attention and he forces his eyes to open to see Voight still in front of him and nobody else in the room. None of them comments on Alvin's dramatic departure and the _hit_ show continues while the younger man gives almost nothing to his defense.

Voight knocks him down on the ground, where Jay finds it extremely hard to prevent the needles from any movement. And it's just in time that he swirls away from Voight to avoid a kick directed to lower part of his torso. The blow finds its target anyway, almost taking his breath away and the other two kicks that come, leave him panting with arched back.

Jay fights with the urge to cry from the pain that begins to overwhelm him, having on mind that he's got exactly what he'd wanted to get. Of course, it would be too easy if he just passed out.

"Get up."

Breathing shakily and dealing with the spinning world, he slowly and carefully starts to pull his legs up to stand on them, only to be pushed down again.

_Fuck._

A weak cry escapes his lips while he's silently screaming inside as one of the needles slashes the skin. Feeling the blood spilling out of it, he instinctively covers the wound with his hand, increasing the ache in the process. _Idiot._

He frantically opens his eyes to search for Voight, because he is not ready to do another stupid mistake and lose awareness of what's about to happen. He panics a little when he doesn't see him and before he manages to check all angles, a hand on his shoulder surprises him and he jerks away. Luckily, the hand only turns him to lie on his back, not causing any more damage.

Voight attempts to push away the hand that distantly protects the wound, but Jay doesn't allow it. "Let me," Voight demands and then finally inspects the torn skin. Holding Jay down, he quickly pulls out the needle that still hangs on a piece of skin that resisted to the uncontrolled motion.

Jay doesn't move an inch - except the heavy breathing, and pressing his lips together in self-repression, he balances out of the anguish, hoping that Voight could finally remove the fucking needles and let him be a cop again, and not his torture trainee.

Soon, it's clear Voight's got a different plan. "Get up," Voight orders again.

Jay narrows his eyes, thinking whether the option to stay on the ground is not a better one.

"I'm not gonna push you down again," Voight assures.

"I don't care. Just do as you please," Jay declares quite breathlessly.

"Okay," Voight shrugs and in a split second, he holds Jay by his throat _helping_ him to get on his feet. Once that's accomplished, Voight pushes him on the wall, still holding his neck and choking him. At some point, Jay can't get enough of air and trying to free himself with both hands, he receives another open-handed and greatly directed slap over his stomach that sets the dampening pain alive again. He groans, but it hardly goes out loud enough to speak up for the way he feels as the fingers around his throat doesn't ease up at all. He is sure he has made Voight pretty pissed off.

"Don't ever try to make this about me," Voight dictates with his raspy and sinister voice, while slowly pushing his other hand against the needles. Jay tries to escape the movement, but having a wall behind him, he's got nowhere to go. Finally, when his vision is almost cleared out from the world around him and his eyes get abnormally wide, he's released with a last thud against the rough wall face.

"I…, d-," he hitches few words between gasps, but gives up quickly as it's not doing him any good and the black spots become to return.

"Don't speak."

Jay takes the advice to his heart and decides he won't speak until he leaves the basement, afraid it's going to take longer than he expects. It turns out the concern is very appropriate.

Not even waiting for the breathing of the younger man to return to normal, Voight leads him to the wall he was tied up to when he first got here and without any speeches he cuffs him to the same pipe as before.

Voight looks at him when the handcuffs are secured and trying not to think much about the expression on Jay's face, which may be either desperate or just raging, he says his goodbye for now. "See you in few hours." He walks away fast and being pretty sure, that in those few hours, this is going to end, he already feels the weight of his actions to lift.

Jay watches Voight leave in exasperation. The adrenalin rush is displaced by deafening pulsing in his head and soon the whole-body ache creeps its way back. He leans against the wall trying to help himself, but it only sets him back to shivering mode. He looks down at the wound, which is still bleeding, luckily not dangerously and there's a good chance it will just stop by itself. But as it looks, several more needles moved during Voight's last actions and caused some small volumes of blood to leak out. He laughs at his own regretful thought of his pants ruined by blood and then rather takes his gaze from it.

* * *

"What the hell are you doing?" Alvin launches at Voight as soon as he closes and locks the door to the basement. Voight doesn't say anything, only shoots Al a stern look indicating he doesn't want them to be heard and takes the discussion to the kitchen.

"What's the problem?"

Alvin takes position very close to Voight, using an advantage from the height difference. "Dont you think you are overstepping a _bit._ Did you just try to kill the kid?"

Voight expected this to happen so he does his best not to lose his coolness and just lets Alvin to ventilate _his_ anger on him. He probably deserves it, so it may as well set some balance on the world.

"He's gonna need at least a week to get out of this." Alvin continues. "You can't put him under broken like this."

"So, you are not worried about Jay. You are just pissed it's gonna take longer." Voight raises his voice, losing it this time.

"I have never suggested to do this in the first place," Alvin reminds Voight how this all started. "That's on you. If you don't have any trouble to comprehend it, then you are mad."

"Yeah?" Voight marvels at him. "And what about the kid, he doesn't have a say in it?"

"Oh, but he does. He said he doesn't want it."

Voices of both men are quite loud at this point, only a little pitch from being heard to the basement. It takes a lot of effort to regain the composure, but somehow Voight manages to calm down and Alvin copies.

"Well, now he's got a glimpse of what awaits him there, now he's got a chance to say _no_ while having some idea what to expect." Voight says, voice quiet.

"Great, so basically you beaten him up just to make him turn it down." Alvin regrets saying that the second it goes out. He bears his own blame on his shoulders for bringing the case in, and revealing his anger over the possibility that Jay could refuse to go under, makes him feel sick of himself.

"Now listen to me. He's got his own issues. Did you notice he hadn't even flinched when we'd asked him to do it? His - okay, let's get me killed? My job is to protect him, even if it means to break him. I'm simply giving him an objective choice. Now it's up to him."

Alvin steps back, resisting the temptation to apologize for raising his voice, but not feeling bad about starting the quarrel. Voight's excuse would be almost perfect, if they both were not sure that no matter what they do to Jay, he takes the job regardless.

* * *

The blood on his skin is almost dry, when the idea sneaks into his mind. When he heard the sound of locking after Voight had left, it didn't strike him as he was fighting the incoming discomfort, but now when he got used to it a bit, it doesn't take long to put two and two together.

It should be easy to free himself.

He tests the restraints and tries to find the keyhole with his frozen fingers. Okay, there it is. Now all he has to do is to pull out one of the needles and use it as a key. Piece of cake.

He shifts his hands little higher, on the level of the needles and then picks one of them, looking down. There is no way he can reach it with his hands behind his back, so he diverts his body to the right. The position is not the luckiest one, but it's doable. He touches the handle of the needle with only the tips of his finger and manages to catch it between them. Holding it firmly, he slowly pulls it out with a long exhale.

It doesn't even hurt that much.

There is a silent moment when Jay just breathes, unmoving, and is somehow ridiculously glad that he's got something about thirty more attempts in case this one goes wrong.

Surprisingly, it goes right and his hands are successfully freed. He is still in the basement, he may still be shivering from the cold and he may still be aching all over his body and feeling nauseous from the fever, but at least he is able to sit or lie down and sleep through it. _Sleep._

Rubbing his sore wrists, he checks the needles with his eyes and considers leaving them in. Extraction of one didn't hurt much, but he was well motivated to do it, right now he could just ignore them and lie down carefully. But it takes only few seconds before he starts removing them quickly, throwing them all around the place and not minding the acrid pain, he hurries to get rid of all of them. When he is done, he uses the water, that was used to drown him, to clean the area from the blood, hissing under the touch that causes more harm than good.

Having nothing else to do, he moves himself to the wall close to the door and collapses on the ground. It's not a bed, soft and warm, but it's definitely better than nothing. He wonders if there is a universe where Voight would let him freeze to death; and then he wonders if there is a universe where Valdez would let him freeze to death. And not being completely sure about the later, he promises himself to try staying alert as long as possible for the sake of all.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am somehow sorry for the delay, the Olympic games messed up my writing schedule :) Now I am back aaand it's after 3:30 in the morning out here, so I think I am absolutely crazy with my late-night-writing, but I wanted to get this out asap. Half of the chapter was quite unexpected for me, so I hope it doesn't sound too bad.
> 
> Next chapter in a week, hopefully! Enjoy!


	8. Chapter 8

 

Nobody could really blame him for falling asleep after four days without proper sleep, especially when his tired and aching body was constantly screaming for it. However, he doesn't give in. He's close to it every passing minute, and these minutes are excruciatingly long, but his fear from freezing is stronger so he doesn't skip any of his regular attempts to keep his blood flow running by exercising his muscles.

He is sitting with hands on his bend knees and head resting against the wall, when the door slowly open. There is some effort to open his eyes and look at the direction, but with his level of exhaustion this effort is not noticeable.

"Jay." Voight declines to his level, eyeing the bruises tentatively forming on Jay's cheek and around his eyes. He can see him move his eye lids a little, but that's it, even after several repeats of his name. And Jay knows it and becomes frustrated from the disobedience his body presents, but that's all he can do. Sit and trying to overcome all the layers of sleep that keep him from moving.

Voight shakes with him and is relieved when Jay sucks in a sharp breath and finally opens his eyes, visibly disoriented. The world suddenly doesn't look like he'd seen it in his mind just a seconds ago when he was trying to get a grip of himself. It looks hostile and loud and blurry. The hand on his shoulder disappeared and is now holding is arm, why? He starts fighting with it, only to be restrained by these strong hands that pin him and his body to the wall.

_Jay!_

He would bet he heard his name, but as his heart beats so hard in his chest, he is not sure that he didn't mishear it. He attempts to fight the hands holding him again, but it goes in vain. He grunts from the helplessness, when one of the hands holding him lands on his face harshly and makes his head snap to the other side and then his back impacts with the wall, hard enough to lose the blinding layer.

"What," he blurts out, eyes wide and hyperventilating. Definitely the most chaotic awakening he experienced in those few days with Voight.

"Finally. You ready to end this?" Voight asks with a smirk when Jay's eyes finally focus on him.

Jay thinks about the question a moment, unsure if it's a tricky one. He is very much ready to end it whenever it fits to his boss, at least that's what this all has been about. Deciding on not replying verbally, he only shrugs.

"Can you speak?" Voight asks, seeing Jay has yet to catch his breath.

This, Jay doesn't know, so he automatically shrugs again rather than trying to say something.

"Jay, just take it easy." Voight gives him a moment.

"I think," he almost whispers.

"Good. I wanna talk with you." Voight says.

If Jay could control his features, he would probably make some consternated expression, but that's not in his power right now as his face is paralyzed by the cold. "What?"

"I am gonna give it a green light. You?"

Again, it takes a while before Jay answers. "You already know my position on this."

"You can always change your mind." Voight reminds.

"Voight, what do you want?" Jay doesn't understand and gets annoyed with Voight's approach. He did not consent to torture just to drop the case, isn't that clear? At least the annoyance makes him more alert. On the other hand, it brings back the never-ending shaking that takes all his energy.

"Just wanted you to know."

"I know. And I am not turning it down. Just let me get out of here." Jay tries not to sound desperately but succeeds only partially.

"Do you realize it could be significantly worse?"

"I can handle worse." Jay says, closing his eyes.

"Really? 'cause you just told me to let you go." Voight points out with voice quite loud.

"Yeah, and you just gave me a green light. No need to prolong this," Jay opposes very quickly, before the shaking starts controlling his voice again. Not to look so helpless, Jay slowly gets on his feet, while taking support from the wall next to him. "If you wanna talk, we can do it over a cup of coffee."

Voight stands up too, amused by Jay's little comment and admits to himself, that the kid has a point. He takes a step back to _enjoy_ Jay's stumbling towards the stairs in all its glory, not going to help him. Not even when Jay stops, obviously absorbing the pain in his legs.

"Uhm," Jay grunts. "Guess you're not gonna help me," he remarks looking back at the older man. "Or stop me," this time it's with a little question mark at the end.

Voight smirks, but shakes his head. "Where are you going?" He asks slowly, showing the amusement in his voice.

"Home." Jay answers simply, getting to move again.

"I'm not letting you go home. You'll stay here. I've got a bed for you upstairs."

Jay stops, not as much because of Voight's words, but because it's becoming too painful to walk as his legs fight with the unyielding blood flow returning to its usual self. "Fine." He agrees, it's not like he would be able to get his ass through half of the city right now, so he partially welcomes the offer.

Voight watches Jay take the stairs up and can't deny the almost proud feeling that forms within him. Jay being so easy about the whole situation was not what he'd expected. Especially after that not very fair fight and yet here they stand, having almost friendly conversation. However, the fact lies somewhere else. Jay doesn't feel so calm and cool at all and only thanks to his exhaustion, he doesn't have to pretend much when looking to Voight's eyes as his own eyes are almost hidden. What Jay feels inside is close to disgust and rejection. And shame. And that's the most problematic one.

At least he manages the stairs and finally breaths in some warm air. He closes his eyes and leans against the wall, letting the heat surround his numb skin only to realize too soon, that it is either too hot there or he's worse than he thought, because these aggressive omnipresent needles he feels right now might be even worse than the thirty real ones. He bends down in attempt to ease it, but ends up dropping on the ground as the effort steals all his strength and he's no longer able to control his muscles.

Voight hurries up with a worried face. "Hey, kid, you ok?" He turns him to see what's wrong.

"Aahh, it's just the heat." Jay explains with eyes shut. So much for some restored dignity. It's obvious that he doesn't stand a chance in getting to bed without some help. Plus, he should make a stop in the bathroom. _Fuck_. "I'm gonna be fine." He assures instead of asking for help, avoiding eye contact. It is exactly how he'd expected. Inevitable weirdness. From now on, it's going to be this way forever.

"I don't doubt that." Voight says, not exactly in a right moment, but then he finally extends his hand to help him up. "Come on." He takes him to the bathroom and leaves him there, reminding to be careful about hot water and to call him if he needed anything. He gives him privacy but doesn't go too far, in case Jay would pass out or just fall. He noticed Jay's distant behavior in his body language, but that's been expected and he is sure it's only a matter of time, before they can go the way they were. Maybe the kid doesn't see it, but it's because he's clouded by rage and shame.

 

* * *

 

When Jay walks out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, Voight is nowhere to be found. Although his absence is welcomed, he stands in this room with a bed motionlessly for several moments to gather his thoughts. Maybe Voight really wants him to behave like at home, but after endless hours of suffering it's not so easily believable. Suddenly, it crosses his mind that he completely forgot about time. He looks in the direction of the window, seeing only dark _night_ and having no way to figure out what day or hour it is, he makes a mental note to ask Voight about that, once he appears again. The next day could also be a working one.

He sways a little as his eyes travel too quickly in the direction of the bed and after regaining his balance, he carefully comes closer, seeing himself under the sheets already. He cannot hide the surprise when he notices the sweatpants and white long-sleeved T-shirt lying on the blanket, right next to a disinfectant and some gauze.

He quickly replaces the towel with the sweatpants and then sits on the bed, hissings as the half-crashed skin on his stomach speaks up on the movement. He looks down at the gash caused by the needle that had been ripped out forcefully and with a frown uses the stinging liquid to clean it. Then he places the gauze over it, sticking it down. Finally, he puts on the t-shirt and with a deep long sight, tucks himself in.

In the exact same moment, he starts feeling miserably. He expected some relief, but instead, all the blows to the head and the effects of icy water and the cold increase about five levels up and the same he can say about the fever and the deafening pounding in his head. It's clear that he's going to live through a couple of very bad days.

"Jay." Voight's voice comes from the door not long after Jay finally closes his eyes. Jay doesn't turn to look at him and nor he makes any response except re-opening his eyes, but that's hidden from Voight. "It's close to Sunday midnight. You'll stay here until you're free of the fever. Alvin is coming tomorrow morning to be here with you while I'm at the precinct." Voight stops, waiting for some sort of acknowledgement, but it never comes. "I'm gonna check up on you in a few hours." Voight adds, thinking that if there's no reply again, he is going to force it out of him.

"Thanks."

 

* * *

 

All desks in the bullpen are empty when Voight enters his workplace the morning after. He catches a glimpse of Hailey in the breakroom, talking with somebody hidden behind the walls, but before he manages to go there and see, she walks out with Will Halstead behind her. _Shit_.

"Morning, Sarge. Have you seen Jay?" she asks directly, small portion of concern visible on her features.

"Sorry, Hank, for barging in here," Will doesn't even give Voight chance to speak, but feeling that Hailey didn't put enough of worry into her question, he feels he must. "But we were supposed to go to Molly's on Saturday, he never came, which wouldn't be so rare, but at least he always sends some lame excuse. I tried to call him thousand times - nothing, I checked his apartment – nothing. I even checked with our father – guess what. And this is the last place I could think of. If you don't know anything about him, I'm just going to fill up missing person report."

By the time when Will is finished, Antonio and Adam also appear in the bullpen, both confounded a bit.

Voight is cursing inside, knowing this is not going to be easy to fix. Pictures of Jay during his worse time at night with a fever hovering closely to the dangerous borderline and his discomforted moans, flashes through his mind and he quickly chases them away and focuses on his confident face, trying to find a believable story that would explain his condition.

Will blinks at Antonio in that short moment when Voight takes to gather his thoughts. "Sorry man, I spent whole weekend with my kids," Antonio throws his arms around and looks at Voight, who finally draws in a breath to speak.

"Let's go to my office," he says to Will, going already in that direction, leaving the intelligence members in bewilderment.

Will immediately travels a few years back when Jay was taken by Keyes and the worst imagination comes in front, but he follows Voight, unpleasant feeling settling in his stomach.

"Your brother is fine," Voight states once Will closes the door behind him.

It sounds too good to be truth to Will and he already knows there's more to it. Some of that worry falls off, but not all of it. "And you couldn't tell me that in front of your team? What's happened? Where is he?" Will throws questions at Voight, being afraid that the core problem will be hidden from him.

"He is at my house," Voight says, knowing there's no point in denying _that_. This time there's no other question from Will and Voight must go out with something. "We got caught up in a case."

"What case?"

"Will, Jay is going to be okay, that's the important thing here," Voight offers instead of answer to his question.

" _Is going to be okay_ …?" Will repeats. "Was it a dangerous drug dealer kind of case? Tell me," Will demands, too much angrily for his own liking, but it's about his brother, so he doesn't care how inappropriately he deals with Voight.

"No," Voight says simply. There's suspenseful silence for a moment and then Voight submits to Will and starts telling lies, having strong feeling there's no other way how to get rid of him. "I can't tell you any details about the case. But… he's banged up a little and ended up in a river while chasing the bastard." Voight says, killing the guilt inside him. "I told him to stay at my house, 'cause he's got a fever. Alvin's with him right now."

First, Will is flushed with a relief, but gets back on the edge when Voight mentions that someone _needs_ to be with him. "Okay. Can I stop by at your house to check up on him?" Will asks somehow calmly and adds, "and kick his ass for ignoring my calls _and_ ignoring me whatsoever."

"Sure," Voight shrugs, knowing that there's not a getaway. He writes down his address and hands it over to Will.

"Thanks," Will takes it and turns to leave. Then stops and slowly turns back to Voight. "You know, ever since he…," he starts, and then stops to rephrase, "ever since his bullet killed the little girl, he is not completely in his usual composed self." Will spills out his worry, but starts to regret it immediately as it feels like he's betraying his brother while all he wanted to do in the first place, was to apologize for being so tempered. "I mean, it's a lot to deal with and I am just worried about him."

Voight nods, being aware of that fact already. He knows that the effort to pay off the _mistake_ is currently Jay's engine.

Will nods back and strides out of the bullpen. He's after long night shift, but the visit of Voight's house is more important to him than his bed. He needs to see on his own eyes that Jay is okay. At the same time, he would love to punch him in his face, but that will have to _wait_ , as it seems.

When Will leaves, Voight gives the same story to the other detectives, adding that the case came from Jay's CI, so he had to act quickly, called only Voight and Al and they all were finished the next day, having no luck in catching that guy. All Jay's co-workers buy it, even when Voight intentionally leaves out the _name_ of the bad guy. The only one who seems to notice some hole in the story, is Hailey, but Voight knows quite well that she won't ask him for the details, she will go to Jay, if at all.

Once everyone has their questions about Jay's health answered, Voight closes himself in the office again and makes a quick phone call. "Al, you need to wake him up. His brother is stopping by."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, goodbye Voight - the tormentor!  
> And welcome you other guys!  
> (it is a weird change btw, after 7 chapters full of the holytrinity xD
> 
> We have this saying in Czech, that when something is really hard, it's like delivering a baby, so hear me - this was exactly it! Lots of direct speeches and that's my biggest worry. (Because of not only the grammar, but mainly because of the slang. Even when I watched like all the Chicago stuff plus some more :D I'm not an expert and never will be!)
> 
> I hope you like it anyway! :) and next time Jay and Will!


End file.
